Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Regress or Impress? CBS Sports Jamey Eisenberg, News

is probably going to go after round eight. You know, I think it's pretty safe to say, depending on how your league is built. So as maybe your fourth running back, and these are the type of guys, you know, it's really where Freeman was last year. You know, nobody really gave him much of a chance to be a starter for your fantasy team. It was kind of an afterthought with where he was built. And so I think PPR leagues, he's going to be probably a disappointment we didn't see him really using that role.

And again, Freeman is so good catching the ball in the backfield. You know, the one thing that was so impressive about Freeman, which I think Coleman needs to work on is his fast protection. You know, that's going to get these young running backs on the field quicker than some of these other guys. And that's why it takes some of these younger running backs a little bit of time before you see them in these passing down situations. So, yeah, Coleman's got a great chance to help a lot of people this year. It could be a four or five game stretch where he's, you know, very good. And just go back to last year at this time, going into training camp.

It was they're going to compete for the starting job. And then they both had the hamstring problems, and Freeman just came out of his better. But you remember the first two games? Coleman was technically the starter. Until you hit his wrist. You know, that's when Freeman took over. Yeah, you had horror stories from fantasy owners last year when Coleman started the year as the starter, and people dropped Devante Freeman from their rosters. And so, yeah, good take there. I want to turn to New York's backfield, the Jets, because...

Matt Forte is kind of a polarizing fantasy name right now. Obviously, he has a long track record of making fantasy owners happy, but I never get very confident when a guy at his age switches, you know, his landscape changes. And now he goes to a backfield where they paid money. They signed Bilal Pal. Kyrie Robinson's there. But there is, you know, a lot of different opinions out there. We get a lot of feedback. People love Matt Forte. I think we're lower on him. Where do you sit with Forte's impact in New York?

as well just hit repeat on what you just said and pretend it came out of my mouth. Yeah, I'm not a big fan for a lot of the reasons he just listed. The one saving grace for him, you know, just to play devil's advocate is Cane Galey. You know, Chang Galey's history was running backs. It's fantastic. I mean, look what he did with Chris Ivory last year. You know, got him his first thousand-yard season, got him to 30 catches, which I think nobody ever thought that he can get, you know, the five, let alone 30.

And so with Forte's ability to catch the ball, it's almost similar to a Devante Freeman situation where his reception total will be so key to what his fantasy production is. I mean, last year, you know, Forte obviously had the three missed game. Only one game over 100 yards rushing, and that was week one. But, you know, he's still so good at the total yards. So I think in PPR league, you could still be okay with Forte. But I think for him, the way he's going to make or break his draft value by the end of the season is that exact word, his value, where he goes in drafts.

will be the determining factor if he helped you out or he hurt your team. Because if you reach for him, I've seen him going round two. To me, that's no way I would touch him. But in PPR, if I get him around four, I'd be okay with it. I don't think he's going to be there, but that's kind of where I would settle for him. And round five or later in standard leagues again, I'm never going to get him because his name value of what people think he's going to do, is going to push him up into a level, which I think is what you're alluding to, where he'll go. But, yeah, if I could stay away from Matt Forte this year, I would absolutely do so.

Yeah, I think we're in agreement there. This is Jason. There's a guy that I am high on that I know a lot of other people, including those in this room, are not necessarily high on. So I'm very genuinely curious. Your take on whether this guy is going to regress or impress next year, sticking in backfield realm, it is Latavius Murray for the Oakland Raiders. You know, and it's funny because I think, you know, you're right, similar to Forte, he could be somewhat polarizing.

I love the offensive line there. You know, what they did this offseason, I would not be surprised if they're the second best offensive line in the NFL behind Dallas. So that's going to make things really open up for Murray. Now, granted, he's not going to be a dominant guy. But if you just take a guy, I think, that we saw last year, at his first thousand-yard season did a, you know, I'll say moderate job of catching the ball. He needs to improve in that regard.

And I think D'Andre Washington is somebody that's going to push him a little bit, but again, I don't think he's going to take him off the field a ton. Jack Del Rio talked a lot. We've all seen the quotes about wanting to add to the backfill, but when I saw him at the owner, he means, I asked him, are you supposed to replace Latavius Murray, or are you trying just to compliment Latvia's Murray? And he said, oh, no, no, no, don't misconstrue what we've been saying. We're trying to compliment what Dave's going. So maybe he loses a few touches, but...

I think that offensive line, I think the defense is going to be better, so they're going to be, you know, more competitive game and not chasing points. And the visions have a little bit worse, you know, with some of the guys leaving teams, you know, the Justin Houston injury, I know he's more of a pass rusher, but, you know, the changes in Kansas City, the changes in Denver. San Diego defense, I think it's still going to be horrible. So there are a lot of favorable things about Latavius Murray. I got him in the fourth round of a PPR mocked at the S-A. That's a take there.

I still like having him on my team. That seems like pretty good value for Murray. So let's shift over to a pass catcher, New Orleans. Brandon Cook's highly touted, first round pick. Last year, we finally caught at least half of a season of a glimpse of what Cooks can do. But you still have to factor in the fact that the first half of the season, Cooks was simply not that great. Can he be the one? Will he be impacted by...

Kobe Fleener coming to town. Michael Thomas being drafted by the team. How do you feel about Cooks? Well, I think if you want Brandon Cooks on your fantasy team, keep telling people about the first half of last year. Don't tell him that Drew Brees missed the game because of a soldier entry and played through a game when he hurt a shoulder against Tampa Bay. I believe it was week two. So I don't think Breeze was right. I don't think that offense was right. They were still trying to get over the loss of Jimmy Graham and sort of how to adjust and still going through this identity crisis of...

We just added Max Unger. We paid marketing room. Are we a running team? Are we a passing team? I think they figured out their identity. And I think bringing back Breeze, even with the contract situation, still somewhat unsettled, but you know he's on the roster, obviously, he's safe. Bringing back Sean Payton, giving him the contract extension, they know what they are. They have a very small window now of, can we get into another playoff situation, Super Bowl situation with this current group that we have and try and rebuild our defense on the fly?

Very similar to what the Carolina Panthers did a couple years ago. So I think if Breeze, stay southeast 16 games, Brennan Cook, State Southeast 16 games, you know the eight games that they play indoors are going to be fantastic because that's the type of team that they are. So I think Cook is tremendous value. I think it's going to be great. He's in my top 10 in my rankings. I think in some cases I might have him too low. I think he's going to have an excellent third-year type of breakout season that we see from some of those guys. Well, just a quick follow-up there.

What do you think about Willie Sneed, then, if you have all this love for cooks, do you think that they can sustain enough value for fantasy-wide receivers to also give Sneed maybe a low-end wide receiver two or at least a three at the worst? Yeah, I think it could be a three. You know, I think the thing with Need that's going to help him is the addition of Michael Thomas, because people are going to look in terms of his value. People are going to look at Thomas and say, well, wow, they add the guy, you know, Sneed was an undrafted tree agent that they, you know,

became sort of a byproduct of need last year with Colston struggling and not really having another option. I saw Willie Sneer at a charity golf event this offseason. I said, you know, what was the difference for you last year? And he's like, look, I just got a hands to play. And so when you're in this type of offense with a great quarterback like that, the one thing that he talked about, which, you know, the addition of Thomas, the addition of Fleener may not come to fruition, but he said, we want to be 1,000-yard receivers. And I think he was like 13-yard shy, something like that. He was in the 980s in that range.

Cooks was over 1,000, you know, so if that's something that's going to push him, and obviously contract now becomes a factor for him, the lower Willie Sneat fall, the better you're going to be. He's definitely somebody you want on your roster. I think it's kind of incredible that, you know, you can have a team finding its identity with Drew Breeze, and then he still leads the league in passing yardage. I mean, it's just incredible, and Breeze is one of our favorite kind of later-round quarterback targets just because of where he is going. So I want to ask you about one last,

backfield before we let you go and we appreciate you coming on the show.

And I want you to settle another kind of inner studio debate here that I have with Jason. And that is, I'm finding T.J. Yeldon as one of my favorite values in the draft. I think people are overestimating the impact. And it's interesting to hear you talk about Chan Galey and the impact he had on Ivory in New York with Ivory now shifting over to Jacksonville. So where do you fall on kind of like the carry split? Is Yeldon only a value in PPR or Half Point Leagues? Or where do you see?

Do you think that Yelden will be a value overall? I think it'll be a value. I mean, this is kind of one of the back shows I would tend to avoid if I could, you know, unless I get one of the guys at a good price. I just think that it's pretty telling that you invested a second round pick in Yelden, and he seemed to show good flashes. I mean, I think we can, you know, I'll take a step back and look at it and say he needs to be better. But he did show some good signs, you know, the injury situation, you know, that he had with his knee.

The fact that they had so little success at the goal line and, you know, those struggles that they had. And, you know, it's probably not a fair situation to put on him because he wasn't part of it at times, you know, when they were going Gerhardt and Bernard Robinson for whatever stupid reason. So I think this is one of those things that if I'm drafting right now, I'd rather wait and get yelled in what somebody else pay for ivory. But I really want to see what happens in training camp and how they use both of these guys. You know, there are, you know, the...

Kind of the thing we have to do in this business, and I'm sure you guys follow on this as well, is you have to tell people what to do now. You also in the back of your mind want to wait and see what develops, and this is one of those things I want to wait and see what develops. But if I had to, you know, look at these two guys right now, I would definitely rather have yelled than Ivory. But I think that Ivory's touchdown, by the end of the year you took the ivory numbers, you know, one of those guys that just at the end of the year, you're like, God, he was terrible. But like Frank Gore, you know, we still finished at a certain number, ranking-wise, you know, just because of his overall production, I think that could be where ivory.

Maybe it's better than Yeldin, but I still rather have Yelden on a week-to-week basis based on what I can get him for. Oh, love it. Love the takes. Thank you so much. Jamie, where can people find you on Twitter, my friend? Oh, it's very simple. Just my name. J-A-M-E-Y-E-I-S-E-N-B-E-R-D. And please, foot claim. If you haven't, which would be ridiculous if you haven't.

Go check out the CBS Fantasy Pod. It's one of the best out there. And Jamie's also cranking out good content on the web. So we'll hope to bring you back on soon and take it easy. It'll be my pleasure. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me on. All right, special thanks to Jamie Eisenberg, CBS Sports, one of the best in the business. And to be honest, when we got started in this, they were some of the forerunners in terms of just...

the best content. So I'm really thankful to have him on and appreciate all the impact that he's made on the industry as well as Adam Azor Dave Richard and all the CBS people there. So let's go ahead and jump in the mailbag. Mailbag. All right. You got a question. You can send it to us. Go to the website, the fancy footballers.com. Click the submit a question button. You could also leave us a voicemail question 3.02464 TFFB. First question comes from Nick in Akron, Canada.

Bonjour. I got psyched out by the Akron. Yeah, he said just kidding. It's Akron, Ohio. Thanks for the bonjour. Well. He got you. Oh, Nick did it. Slow clap from Mike. He said, thanks for all you do. You guys are so-so. I fell right into that trap. Yeah, you did. It was great. You have helped. I had to read the question quick before you got your eyes on it. You have helped me withstand a few victories on his way to a hashtag Foot Clan title. Oh.

He can only keep one of these guys, full point PPR, Alan Robinson for a four, Ryan Matthews for a seven, Eric Decker for an eight, Jeremy Hill for an 11, and then he said, we're seriously great, thanks again. This one is much easier to dig through than the trap that I was led into. I feel led astray by you, Nick. But that's Alan Robinson.

for a fourth, not even close. I completely agree. I like looking at Decker and the 8th, but when you have Robinson and the PPR numbers that he's going to put up in this type of a league, it's a lock and loaded for me. I disagree that it is not close, but I do agree with... Who's it? Who's your... Mine would actually be Ryan Matthews in the 7th, I think, is a really good value, but I think you'll be able to draft Ryan Matthews later. You'll be able to draft him in the 5th or the 6th. No, exactly. So, I mean, Robinson is my pick. I just don't think it's like home run.

All right, Garrison in California says, hey, I got the first overall pick in my fantasy league. It's standard scoring, and I'm having trouble deciding between Gurley, Bell, and Brown. Who should I pick in a standard scoring league? Yeah, that's... I can see the difficulty there. However, I understand it's standard, and you think, oh, Antonio Brown PPR, but for me, standard, I'm still going to go with Antonio Brown over Gurley, who's in a...